Pilgrimage
by Lucesco
Summary: One-shot He walks his path. Not knowing where it's leading to, Piccolo follows the path that was made by Kami's footsteps. On a pilgrimage. Not knowing it leads him to an experience he shall never forget.


I walk this path.

Alone in the darkness, I walk the path that leads to the memories that have never faded away, the memories of my life before I was born into the world as the being I am now. I was a spirit when I walked this path, a ghost, part of the essence of a whole being at the time. Part, never the whole. Never more than just a part. Never an independent being.

I walk this path as an independent being now.

I recognize where I am. It is as if I have been here before. But I have walked this path before. I knew that. It was when I was a spirit, a mere spirit with no free will, locked in the heart of a whole being, living as a bodiless form of life. I've walked this path. That's why I'm walking it again.

I walk this path as I remember my forgotten past.

Paths. One pair of feet made it, and only one pair of feet can walk it again. The pair has gone, the one who has made this path is vanished into me and only I can follow its footsteps. Because the one who made this path is part of _my_ being. Is a spirit that lingers in my heart.

My own heart.

My own body.

It is mine.

I walk this path on my own, being what is mine.

This path is my history, made by the footprints of he who is in me. Only I can maintain my history now, only I can remember. Without me, it is dead. That is why I walk it. To preserve my history. I walk in the present, saving my past. Without present there is no past. Without past, there is no hope for the future. And with no hope for the future, what is the life I have at all?

I walk this path to save my past, to save my future, to save my life.

I, Piccolo, am saving my life.

Discovering the history I barely remember.

On a pilgrimage.

I walk through forest, meadow, march. Over the fields, through the mud, under the trees. I come across many trees. Elm, ash, pine, maple. Holly, birch, alder, hazel. Oak, willow, chestnut, linden.

Trees are extraordinary. The oldest tree on this planet is more than 12.000 years old. That makes it the oldest living being on this earth. What wisdom lays under their wooden skin? What answers could they provide me, if they spoke? Men are nothing compared to trees.

Trees are past.

Trees are present.

Trees are future.

Trees are life.

I love very few things in this world, but trees is one of them.

You have seen these trees, as I am seeing them now. You have walked under them, you have heard their leaves whistling in the wind, you have been awed by them. So have I. History repeats itself. Or we are just going back in time. Following the long paths that take us to our histories long forgotten. Yes, we are going back in time. You and me. The body with two spirits. Only now, that body is mine. Now you are part of a whole. Now I am independent.

Everything is different yet all is the same.

We have changed and at the same time we haven't. The roles are switched. What you once was, I have been. What I am, you were. But we're still a whole, one part of another. A heart divided into two. Two spirits in one being.

Piccolo and Kami.

Your spirit is guiding us. Telling us where to go. Leading the way. And I follow you, and the path that carry your footsteps. For it is your footsteps that made this path, and mine that shall maintain it. Four days and nights I have walked, not flying. Not once. Discovering… remembering more and more of the past we share.

I must be coming close. The forest is getting more dense. It is as if the trees are waiting for me. Have you left them here for me, Kami? To protect the place that is dear to your heart? To our heart? I see an old maple tree. It has red leaves, because it's autumn. It forms a sharp contrast with the trees around him. A normal being couldn't see this. Their vision is too imprecise. I can though and even though it is night, I can distinct the red color from the weaker colors of the other trees around the maple.

We both remember this maple. We remember it because it's majestic and magnificent. An example of true perfection. From the bark, to the leaves, to the branches, to the roots… everything is flawless.

It is not far now. Five miles to the north-east is the place I need to go. The place where it all began. The place that you cherished so much when still living in your own body. A place that has memories and history, where our joint pasts lie.

I walk on. Getting closer and closer. My legs feel like stone, every step is getting more difficult to take. I am reluctant to find the place you love so much. I feel that it is intrusion, yet the place is also mine. There lies not only your start, but also mine. There lies our past. My past. A past I need to save in order to save my own future. Preserve the past so I can live my life in peace. I walk on.

The closer I get, the farther it seems. The last miles appear to have no end. They are the longest miles of my life, and yet, after a while, I am there. It is dawn, the night is over.

I am where I need to be today.

And I see it. A hill in the middle of the forest. An unusual hill, as it's not sloping, as it should be, but with a flat top. Like a table. A table top hill. In the middle of the forest.

My hands shake. This is it, it is the moment that I finally face my past, and reunite you with yours. You long to see it, I long for answers. Answers that I might find here, at the top of this hill. I have questions about my past. And I shall ask them.

I float to the top of the hill, as I floated down once, being part of you, a long time ago, and land of the flat surface. I feel a connection immediately. I can feel the history. I recognize this place.

So this is where you descended from the heavens, Kami?

At the top of this hill, you landed and started your life on this earth.

I take the position that I usually take when meditating and I let this place overcome me. At first it is just a place I had a connection with, a connection I could feel. I had been here before, I remember it vaguely. But gradually it's becoming more to me. I know it is more for you, Kami, but I need to discover it first. And as I listen to the sounds in the air, I noticed that there is silence, complete silence. Not just the absence of sound, but something much, much more. Something deep, profound. Something unearthly. I am startled by it.

The silence creeps through my being, becomes part of me. Part of us. I have the feeling I am not even breathing, as if the blood has stopped running through my veins. You embrace the silence, I cannot yet. It is too unfamiliar for me still. But I do know this.

The silence is something not from here. It's… divine.

I look around. It seemed to be a normal place but somehow it wasn't. It wasn't just the table top hill with the grass on the top. I could feel the history here, I could feel our past. I could feel my own past.

This is where our lives started. Where our conscious was born.

And suddenly I saw it.

Suddenly something shifted in me.

The colors around me begin to live. I can see them. For the first time in my life I could actually see them. Not the colors of the grass, or the soil, or the soft blue sky and the orange horizon, but the colors _itself_. Green, red, blue, orange, brown, yellow, pink… the colors were living things on it's own, they are bodies that used to be invisible to me. It is alive. I look around and I am shocked by what I am seeing. Everything glows with light of life, because everything is colored. The grass, the earth, the trees on the foot of the hill, the hill itself. My hands are glowing as well. I can feel my life, I can feel it running through my body.

Everything is alive.

I can feel the life in the earth beneath me, in the sky above me, in the air that surrounds me in a fresh breeze.

I am astonished by it.

The silence is going through me as I am looking at the new world where everything is different. I gasp for air as the sun is rising. I have never seen something so beautiful.

I realize that I have a revelation. The most powerful one in my entire life.

I can see it all now. I can see the things as they are. I can see what my place is in this world and I can see the world itself. And the world can see me, it's conscious of me.

I used to feel small in the universe. I was merely one person, the world was so enormously big. But now I finally realize that I am not just one creature in a big world, but I am _part_ of it. I _am_ it. I am the world and the world is me. I am not living in the world, but I am living the world. The world is living me.

I can't move anymore. I am too much in shock, in a blissful shock. I am conscious of the world. Conscious of everything.

I have found my God.

And as I am thinking that, I am suddenly being pulled back to reality again. The colors disappear, the light of life is fading and the silence is broken by the whispering of the wind.

I need air. I realize that I haven't taken one breath of air since I saw the sunrise. For a while, I can only pant, my breathing slowly returning to normal.

It was gone.

The consciousness was gone.

I found my God, and lost him when I grasped it.

But in this brief moment, I know my life has changed.

I found my God.

The world was my God.

The world I am part of. The world I was conscious of. The world whose true colors I saw only briefly. But I will remember this magical moment forever.

I am part of my God.

And I understood now why it is here, in this place that I found my revelation.

You found it here, Kami. This is the place where you became divine. In this place where you descended from the skies and touched the earth for the first time. It wasn't a coincidence. You landed here with a purpose, with a meaning.

And now, I know what my meaning is. I know I am a part of something bigger, of something everlasting. I have become divine. Thanks you to, my dear Kami.

We have been fused for years, and you always wanted me to take you back here. Save the past that was so dear to you, the history about us that had to be preserved. For my own sake, for I had forgotten that past. I now finally gave in to your requests to see the place where we were born on the earth, hoping to find the answers to questions I asked myself always. Why am I here? Where do I go? What's the purpose of this all? Especially when you're a loner, you wonder about that. You wonder if all of this isn't just an illusion, or a waste of time. If it's worth living.

But now I know.

In this place, where our lives began, I found my past, I found peace. Here I am safe. Here I am holy. Here is my church. Our church. And no matter where my path is leading me, it is going to end here. Our lives, Kami, that started hundreds of years ago are going to end here. Like a circle. We end at the beginning.

Not now.

Not yet.

But someday.

This is the path we walk.


End file.
